Back button offenses

[emmagrant01]

What are your back button offenses in fic? Things that will make you hit the back button and stop reading, no matter how promising the premise/summary/pairing?

A really big one of mine is the use of epithets for characters. No, seriously: a single instance of "the blond Slytherin" or "the detective" (or god forbid, "the older man" - especially from said older man's POV!) and I'm out of there. I can put up with too many adverbs, overuse and abuse of dialogue tags (meaningful glance at JKR here), and even every other sentence starting with a gerund (though I mentally restructure the sentences after a while), but not character euphemisms.

In my decade of reading fanfic, my experience has been that epithet use is typically a symptom of a larger problem and is almost always accompanied by a whole host of other writing problems that will distract me from the fic to the point that I don't enjoy it. At all.

So I back button. :-P

You?

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Edit: I finally got home from work and got everyone fed and had a chance to sit down and check email, and y'all have been having a whole huge conversation on here! Carry on, then. :-P

Comments

[who_la_hoop]

to constantly miss a comma in a quote, or before someone's name in a quote: "Thank you Emma." drives me batshit

I am an editor, and I had an author tell me recently that she missed out those commas occasionally on purpose, because that was how the character spoke.

*crying forever*

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. But while the character may be speaking, THIS is WRITING and writing has rules.

[connorblond.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. *head-desk*

[conuly]

There is a way to do that properly, but only professionals should try it, and never at home. Sheesh.